No Family is Perfect
by Flavato Forever
Summary: An unknown piece of Flack family history surfaces and comes to New York. Featuring Don Flack, his family (Sam Flack, OC) and Jess Angell, along with some other characters. AU-ish - occurs (loosely) around Season 5, but ignores some events from that season. **I do not own cover image nor any of the characters found in CSI:NY**
1. Chapter 1

Don sips from a glass of cranberry juice, the only drink he has in his apartment other than beer, and winces. He had purchased it a few months ago, goaded by Jess on one of those trips to the supermarket where his girlfriend's ideas of good food invaded his own shopping cart. It was most likely expired by now, but you can't very well serve Budweiser to a sister who was supposed to be a recovering alcoholic.

When ancient, bitter liquid is clearing an acidic path down your throat by means of just about destroying everything it touches, it is very hard to be sympathetic to other people's problems, Don muses. Problems like an insatiable need to be drunk.

Why couldn't Sam just _not _be an alcoholic? Why couldn't she, just this once, have a bottle of beer and not _require _more? Or, even better, why couldn't he have some while she drank this God-forsaken juice? It was his apartment, after all.

His mess of a younger sister had dropped by unannounced ten minutes earlier. Out of that weird kind of familial love that can transcend years of betrayal and disappointment, Don had invited her in, despite the late hour. Now she sat on his couch, looking pretty terrified.

"Don, I got something to tell you."

"About what?" He attempted nonchalance while internally bracing himself for a confession to a relapse.

"Do you remember Svetlana?"

Don racked his brain, which was fogged by the past eighteen hours he had spent awake, as well as the alarms going off in his body from consuming something that was most likely older than the latest addition to the Messer family. Eventually, though, he managed to pull a face out of the recesses of his memory.

"That exchange student who came here when you were a senior?"

"Yeah."

"I guess. God, it's been decades, Sam. What about her?"

She pauses, looking at the deep purple liquid in her cup. "She dated Patrick, remember?"

"I guess so. She was only here for a few weeks. Why?"

"He got her pregnant."

It takes a moment for Don's tired brain to register the few, clipped syllables.

"He got her pregnant?"

Sam nods, trying to gauge how he was reacting.

"Did she have the baby?"

She nods again.

"That was sixteen years ago, Sam. Why didn't you tell me then?"

"Patrick just told me a few days ago.

"So why are you telling me now?"

"Svetlana just died. Her kids are all being sent to their father's families. But Patrick says he's too busy with work, so he asked Gran…"

"So the kid…

"The girl. It was a girl. She's coming here, to live with Gran."

Sometimes it seems that the moments that you most need a drink are those when you cannot have one.

* * *

><p>Anna Nabieva is currently in a plane on the tarmac of John F. Kennedy International Airport, taxing over to Gate 13C. The entirety of her living relatives in New York were sitting in three seats just outside security waiting for her. Notably absent was the girl's father.<p>

Allegedly, someone had given Anna a picture of the family, so that she would know what they looked like at the airport. The Flacks had not received any pictures of her, nor had any direct contact with the teenager, leaving them with many unanswered questions, the most pressing of which was to what extent the girl knew English.

The family, an abnormal group of sister, brother, and grandmother, wait in silence. At nearly ninety, Georgia Flack wasn't really in the shape to take care of another child, though she seemed best suited out of the three present to do so – or, at least, the one who was most reliably sober and available.

This was the fourth time the group had gathered in JFK's international terminal in the past week. The first time, they had discovered, after waiting for the better part of an hour, that the flight from Moscow that Anna was supposed to be on had been canceled, and she was rebooked on a connection through Berlin. A day later, they made the trek out through the infamous New York traffic, and that flight had been canceled as well. Anna bounced from Germany to Italy to France to Spain, before finally landing a flight across the Atlantic, but, apparently, the Delta staff in Barcelona aren't really up-to-date on international relations, because the poor child got all the way to Havana before someone told her there were not flights from Cuba to the United States. She bounced across the Americas for a day, and was just now coming to New York.

Five minutes pass, and then the sign announcing flight status says that Flight 8594 from Quebec had de-boarded. Six eyes turn toward the stairwell, an action which was rather pointless, considering no one knew what Anna looked like.

Eventually, a young girl approaches the Flacks, and they suck in a collective breath of anticipation.

The sixteen-year-old was verifiably gorgeous. She had a pale, narrow face, framed by bright red hair that hung down to her belly button. A tall and lean figure was shown off in a tight long-sleeve top and jeans, with muscular arms, grasping a small suitcase and backpack, a flat stomach and chiseled legs with the ever-coveted thigh gap. She floated across the airport, the swarms of people seeming to clear a path for her.

"You must the Flacks. I am Anna," she said when she got within hearing range, in a thick but intelligible Russian accent.

They start the awkward introductions – no one present was taught how to act in front of a teenage family member you did not know existed until a week ago. Anna seemed unperturbed.

"We should go get your bags from baggage claim," Don suggests.

"I did not check luggage," Anna replies.

"That is all you have?" The two bags could not hold much.

"All the possessions I have accumulated over my 16 years of existence, yes."

There was the answer to one question – her English was pretty damn good.

* * *

><p>It was ten at night Eastern Standard Time, but to the Anna's body, it was somewhere around eleven in the morning. Despite half a week of travel, she did not appear tired at all.<p>

The whole group from the airport sat in Georgia's living room. The remnants of a dinner the elderly woman had spent all day eagerly preparing – mostly emasculated by the announcement, from Anna, upon entering the house that she was not hungry in the least – were on the table. Anna sat, legs crossed, on one side of the living room sofa, exuding confidence, in spite of the long plane ride and unfamiliar country.

She had detailed what she called her "grand tour of world airports" on the drive home, drawing laughs from all three Flacks, and not just of the polite kind. Her tale of navigating the maze-like terminals in Florence left both Don and Sam in tears.

She listened eagerly to the summary Don gave her of the American side of her family. From what Don could gather, she seemed friendly, warm, bubbly, almost, and completely untroubled by the awkwardness of her current situation.

"Tell us about your family," Sam says. "Or, the other side of your family."

Anna thinks for a moment before beginning.

"We – my siblings and I – grew up living with our mother, and her occasional boyfriends. I have nine siblings," – at this Don raises his eyebrows – "two older brothers, two younger brothers and five younger sisters, who are all currently en route to or residing at one of their paternal family's residences. Except both my older brothers, who are legal adults and live on their own."

"All your siblings have different fathers?" Don asked, almost accusingly. The girl seemed unbothered by his tone, which was harsher than he had intended.

"Yes."

"What did your mother do?"

"Various things. She switched jobs often. The only thing she really did consistently was shoot up heroin."

The listeners jerk slightly. "Heroin?"

Anna cocks her head, looking confused. "Heroin? It's a drug?"

"No, I know what heroin is." Anna smiles. "But your mom… she was an addict?"

"Yes. She started out with marijuana, I think when she was perhaps sixteen or seventeen. It escaladed to heroin when I was around two, I believe. Perhaps before then, but that was when my older brothers became aware of her using."

None of the Americans present seem sure of how to precede, despite – or perhaps because of – their superior knowledge of the language being used. After a moment, Anna continues as if the pause had not occurred.

"My mother died three weeks ago. She walked in on a burglary, or so it is believed. The police in our town were not exactly enthusiastic about investigating her murder, and no one was, how you say, 'breaking down doors' for answers. Ironic, I suppose."

"Ironic?"

"Her death. Or, rather, the means of her death. She smoked three packs of cigarettes a day from the time she was fourteen, she drank like a sailor coming off a bad divorce, and she injected enough illegal substances into her body on a daily basis to knock out an elephant, and she died of a gunshot wound to the chest."

"You have really good English," Sam says, attempting to steer the conversation away from death and drugs. "What part of Russia are you from?"

"Thank you. I learned my English in school. I am from a small town called Krasnokamsk, about seventeen hours northeast of Moscow."

After a moment, Anna picks up again. "My two younger brothers and one of my sisters now live in Russia. One of my sisters is in Germany, one in Ontario, one in Baltimore and one in Boston. And now I am here."

It takes a moment for this information to sink in. "And now you are here," Georgia repeats.

"What do you two like to do, for fun?" Don asks, for lack of anything else to say.

"I dance," Anna says. "Competitively. It is quite common in Russia. I also like football – ah, soccer, I mean – and field hockey."

"I don't doubt it," Sam says, eyeing the girl's muscular legs showing through her tight pants.

"Doubt what?" Anna asks.

"That you play so many sports."

"Why would you doubt that?"

"What?"

"For what reason would you doubt that I play the sports that I just named?"

"No, I…" Sam shakes her head. "It's late. We should be getting to bed."

This starts the long process of familial goodbyes, hugs and kisses and promises to visit soon. Anna watches quietly, dutifully hugging her aunt and uncle before they leave, and seemed to catch on quickly to the Flack habit of kissing cheeks.

Once in the elevator, Sam takes a deep breath.

"Can you believe that?"

"Hmm?" Don is distracted by his desire to sleep.

"That her mom did heroin? And had all those kids?"

"What I can't believe is that Patrick all but washed his hands of her."

_His loss_.


	2. Chapter 2

Don sits across from his girlfriend, enjoying the biting yet warm sensation of a small sip of Irish coffee going down his throat. Jess is wearing that purple sweater he loves, with that neckline that dips _just_ low enough on her chest. Even after a double shift, her smile manages to light up the small café. The place is crowded and noisy, but the army of voices and clanking of dishes in the back cannot permeate the detectives' small sanctuary of post-work drinks.

"So, what is she like?"

Don thinks a moment before replying. "Sweet. Polite. Very… open. She'll tell you anything, and I can't tell if it's a cultural gap thing or just something about her. I don't know. How do I talk to her? What do I say to her?"

"Oh, come on, Don. Talk to her like you would any other kid. I've seen Mac assign you to the kid cases; they all love you. And Anna's probably pretty freaked out. Can you imagine? Moving across the world, away from your family, to people you don't know? Trust me, there's no way she's expecting anything more from you than to be nice to her." As is usual when he's tired, Don focuses more on the movement of Jess's beautiful lips than her words, and he has to reach back through his brain when she's finished talking to register what she's said.

"I'm sorry. We've been talking about me this whole time-"

Jess reaches her hand out and places it over his. "Hey, a niece you didn't know existed until last week just moved here from a country that we were at war with until about twenty years ago. I think that gives you license to dominate the conversation for a couple nights."

Don chuckles softly. "No, but really, how are you?"

Jess scoffs. "You know how it is. If some scumbag decides to kill another in a nasty alley in this city, it comes down on the lowly third-grade detectives."

"I remember those days. I don't miss them."

"At least your suspects aren't checking out your ass while you're trying to interrogate them or writing down their phone numbers instead of their alibis."

"Hey, there've been a couple of times…"

She playfully smacks his hand, and they both laugh.

"I saw your dad today," Don says, before taking another sharp mouthful of his coffee.

"Oh, really?"

He nods. "Yeah, ran into him at the dry cleaner's."

"How was he? I haven't seen him in a while."

"Fine. He seemed healthy, happy. Mentioned this new club he joined or something – ah, what was it…"

"Oh, not the meat society."

"That was it – Harry's Cuts or something?"

"Harold's Cuts, yeah." Jess rolls her eyes. "It's all he talks about now. It's some mail-order thing where they send you a different cut of meat from a different part of the world every other week. I swear, every time he gets a package, he calls me and tries to start a conversation over Turkish veal or British sirloin. I can only blame myself; I kept telling him he needed a hobby after he retired."

"At least he didn't get into an illegal senior gambling ring."

"There are no such things."

Don nods, enjoying the lovely look is disbelief on Jess's face. "Messer and I shut one down a few years back. Can you imagine putting ten grandmas in cuffs and driving them downtown? The media had a field day – I can still see the headlines: 'NYPD Now Prosecuting for Baking Cookies and Pinching Cheeks.'"

Jess laughs without reservation, showing nearly the entire top row of her shining teeth.

"Meat society's not lookin' too bad now, huh?"

She shakes her head, causing her hair to fall forward, covering her cheek. Don gently brushes it behind her ear.

"Speaking of Messer, how are he and Lindsey doing?"

It is the fourth time Jess has brought up babies while the two were alone together, a fact that is not lost on Don.

"Apparently they have slept a combined seven hours in the past two weeks." He considers adding that he does not envy them, but was afraid that would lead into a deeper conversation than he was ready to have at after being awake for twenty hours. "How are Mark and Isabelle doing with Hailey?"

Jess smiles at the mention of her brother and niece. "Similar reports of sleeplessness."

"My mother sure complained about us as newborns enough when we were growing up."

"Do you ever see Patrick?"

The question catches Don off-guard, and his face betrays his surprise. Jess looks as if she is going to apologetically change the topic, but Don speaks before she can.

"Almost never. LAX to JFK isn't exactly a quick flight."

"He doesn't comes back to visit? What about holidays, birthdays?"

Don shakes his head. "He burned all his bridges here. Always wanted to get out of the city. Sam and I used to joke that the traffic got to him, but it's not like he really escaped it, going to LA. I never really understood his obsession with leaving; I love this place. I can't imagine living anywhere else. But New York was never Patrick's home, I guess. He left as soon as he turned eighteen, and I haven't seen him since, except for our parents' fiftieths and Grandpa's funeral. I mean, you must get that. Tommy moved away young, didn't he?"

Jess purses her lips slightly. "To Baltimore, and only for a baseball scholarship to UMD. Not exactly across the country; and he comes back for all the birthdays, Christmases, weddings, anniversaries, everything. He's gotta be some sort of gold member with Southwest, he flies here and back so much. And we're on the phone with each other all the time."

Don shrugs. "Patrick just wanted to get away."

"What does he do?"

"I'm not even really sure. I call on his birthday, and, if I get him when he's home, that's the only time we ever talk. Last I heard, he was some bigwig banker, and looking at some of those million-dollar-view type houses in Pacifica."

"Not carrying on the family tradition?"

Don laughs. "Let's just say you definitely can't afford the houses, or cars, he likes on a city salary."

"Does he a wife? Kids?"

In his sleep-deprived state, Don almost lets a sarcastic _You mean other than the one he abandoned to us? _slip out, but he stops himself. "Not that I know of, though I doubt I'd probably be the last to get that kind of news."

"And he doesn't even want to come _meet _Anna?"

"Like I said, he burned his bridges."

Jess shakes her head. "I can't imagine that – not wanting to even see your only child."

"Think of how Anna must feel. She's never known her father, and now, even when she had nowhere else to go, he shrugs her off."

Jess grasps Don's hand again. "That's not true. She has you, and Sam, and your Grandma. And from what you told me, that's a pretty big improvement on her life before she came here."

Don smiles slightly before leaning in to kiss his girlfriend. He throws a twenty on the counter, and then the two detective braces themselves and walk out together into the snowy night.


	3. Chapter 3

Work keeps Don busy, and he does not see he niece again for two weeks after their first meeting. He gets almost daily updates from Gran, in the form of phone messages he could barely find time to listen to. Anna talks too much and eats too little for the elderly woman's standards, and dances to any music that was playing. Her English is all but impeccable; she reads everything she could find, and seems excited about going to school when it started up in late August. A point in her favor is her willingness to learn bridge, and she is extremely good at it so far. She and Sam are apparently already thick as thieves, as she had spent one night there, and when Gran went to pick her up they were braiding each other's hair and talking about their favorite movies.

One Friday, after a particularly grueling day at work – six hours in the interrogation room with a New York City lowlife who absolutely refused to reveal the whereabouts of his accomplish in jewelry-store-robbery-turned-homicide – the phone message he listened to over lukewarm microwave-heated leftovers is short. _I'm going to a bridge tournament this weekend in Long Island and Sam's busy, so I need Anna to come stay at your place. I'm going to drop her off at your house at ten tonight._

Don sighs and puts his fork down. He can hardly refuse the retiree her greatest pleasure – competitive bridge games – and he know he is better suited for keeping a teenager than his sister, however close the two were. But he has work tomorrow and little to keep the girl occupied while he was gone.

The clock over the stove reads 9:37, so he really doesn't have any other options but to accept Anna and hope she brought a book.

Thirty minutes later, there is a sharp knock on the door. He opens it to find his niece standing in the hallway with a huge smile and the same backpack she had been wearing when they first met. His grandmother had shrewdly sent her up alone, not giving him the chance to argue.

Anna had already eaten, and agrees to watch the Yankees game, though she admits she knew next to nothing about baseball.

Don turned the TV on mute and asked his niece what she thought so far of New York.

"It's much warmer than where I am from. And bigger." Her eyes light up with the description. "There are so many people – it seems you could have dinner with a different group every night for years and not repeat once. Where I am from, everyone knows everyone. Why are they chewing gum?"

It takes Don's tired brain a moment to realize she has moved to talking about baseball. "Oh, them? It's just something baseball players do. They used to chew tobacco. Now it's more gum, sunflower seeds, stuff like that."

"Won't they choke when they start running?"

"No, the players – especially the ones out in the field, the ones who aren't batting – they don't really run all that much."

The conversation continues in this way, small narratives by Anna interrupted by periodic questions about baseball. She seems to not understand the appeal of the game, with the never-ending strike-outs and few exciting moments, but watched until the end without complaint.

Don thinks back to his coffee with Jess. Just be nice, she had told him. That's all Anna will expect.

But how could he apologize for everything that had happened to her since his brother had abandoned her before she was even born? How could he express that, if he had known about her and her situation, he would have so happily taken her from her mother, and taken care of her? Would she appreciate that? What would she be like if she grew up here, instead of some unheard-of tiny town in freezing Siberia?

For now, he simply lays some sheets and blankets over his couch, and kisses his niece goodnight.

* * *

><p>The blaring alarm, snoozed one-too-many times, pulls him from some odd dream he will forget by the time he finished his first cup of coffee of the morning. He forgets there was another person in the apartment for a few minutes, brushing his teeth in a daze. He will be late for work, and rush hour traffic in New York was deadly. So he was slightly startled, disoriented, to find Anna awake, dancing to the radio while doing dishes in the kitchen.<p>

He watches her dance for a minute. Her movements are obviously unchoreographed, and he doubts that she was familiar with the song – it is one of those obscure decade-old pop atrocities – but she floats around so gracefully, so happily, it is impossible not to be infected with her joy.

"You don't have to do that," he interrupts, motioning to the sink full of dirty water.

She looks up and smiles. "It's not a problem."

"Well, thank you, then. I'm sorry I have to rush out, but I'm late for work. Do you think you'll be okay here all alone?"

"I'm sure I'll be fine."

"Okay. Help yourself to anything in fridge."

He considers making coffee, then decides against it, since he's already going to be walking out the apartment door a good half hour after he was supposed to be reporting to the precinct. At this hour, he will be stuck in stop-and-go for at least forty minutes. He kisses his niece's cheek and runs to the elevator.

There's no service in the claustrophobic box, nor the parking garage, so, by the time he reaches into his pocket for his phone to call Mac, he realizes he's left it in his room. He curses under his breath and settles in for an aggravating commute.

* * *

><p>"Has anyone seen Flack?" Mac calls through the lab. His question is met by noncommittal head shakes. Danny, the best bet for an answer, is at a crime scene, as is Lindsey, Stella and Jess. Flack's phone was going straight to voicemail, either dead or off. He was late, and the case they were working was moving quickly.<p>

"Adam." The man looks up from the computer, where he is going over month after month of phone records. "I need you to go to Flack's apartment and make sure he's coming in today."

"You need me to go to his apartment?" Adam's eyes widen.

"Yes. Now."

"Okay. Okay. I'll go to his apartment. Now. I'm going now." He jumps up, nearly knocking over his desktop in the process.

Had either Don or Adam been paying attention, they would have noticed passing each other, going opposite directions, on 28th street. But Adam was double checking that he had the right address and Don was fiddling with his car radio, so they both continue their treks through the thousands of Manhattan commuters.

As Adam was riding in the elevator only just evacuated by the man for whom he was looking, Anna was rinsing ketchup off a plate, and ended up splashing the reddish-brown cream on her shirt. In order to properly rinse the stain, she had to slip out of her top, leaving only her lacey bra and leggings.

Adam stands in front of Flack's apartment door for a solid three minutes. Why did he have to wake the guy up? In all honesty, after Mac, and maybe Stella on a bad day, Flack scared him most. He was beloved by half the police force, and respected by the rest, and Adam had seen him on more than one occasion scare a suspect into tears. This was definitely not in his job description. What is he was sick, or hung over? What if he answered the door with a gun in his hand? Adam knew computers, not guns. What if there was no answer at all? Should he go in? How would he even get it? Can he simply go back to the crime lab, empty handed?

He finally works up the courage to knock, and, as one might suspect, is scared speechless when the door is answered by a girl without a shirt.

"Hello, may I help you?" Anna asks.

"Hi, yeah, um, hello, I'm looking for Don Flack?"

"Oh, yes, he left maybe-" she glances behind herself, to the hall clock, "twenty minutes ago. Is there something I can do for you?"

"No, no, I'm just making sure that, you know, he left, and everything's okay, and, um, hey, can I ask you a question?"

"Of course."

"Are you, a, um," he barely whispers the word, "hooker?"

"A what?"

"A hooker."

"A hooker?"

"You know, a, um, a prostitute?"

When the foreign word finally registers in Anna's mind, she breaks out into a fit of giggles. Looking down, she realizes she does, in fact, look like a prostitute.

"No, no," she barely manages through the laughter. "I'm not a hooker. I'm Don Flack's niece."

Adam's face goes bright red. "Oh, oh, okay, I see. I'm sorry, I didn't mean to offend you, really, I just-"

"Don't worry about it. I _totally _look like a prostitute. What's your name?"

"Adam. I work with your uncle. I didn't know he had a niece, so, you know, I was confused when you answered the door, and…"

"And I didn't have a shirt on? Yeah. Quite understandable. Well, it's nice to meet you Adam. I'm Anna. I wish we perhaps could have met under different circumstances – preferably in a situation where I was not half naked. But, ah, se la vie. Can I offer you something to drink, or eat? Coffee, water?"

Adam is about to respectfully decline, run back to the car and pray the girl doesn't tell her uncle about their little exchange when Mac calls.

"Boss?"

"Are you at Don's?"

"Yeah, he already-"

"He's here. Is his niece there? A Russian girl?"

"Anna? Yeah." Panic sweeps over Adam, as he gets the irrational idea that his boss could somehow know that he called the girl a prostitute.

"Is she okay?"

"Yeah, she's fine, I guess."

"She's not hurt?"

"Not that I know of."

"I need you to get her and bring her to the precinct. Don's just gotten a death threat."


	4. Chapter 4

The ride to the precinct – made much more comfortable by Anna's retrieval of another shirt from her backpack – is shorter than the ride from it. Rush hour had begun to clear up, as much as it did on the island, and less than twenty minutes after Adam got the call, he and Anna were walking into the police station.

The relief is evident on Don's face at the sight of his niece, unharmed. She sits patiently through his questions. Yes, she is fine. No, no one came to the apartment, besides Mr. Adam. No, she did not notice anything unusual. Yes, she locked the door behind her. Once Don was satisfied, Anna sits down in his desk chair and opens her book while her uncle works with Stella to compile a list of possible threateners.

Time passes easily, with Don writing name after name of people who might want him dead and Anna reading without complaint. After about an hour, she looks up from her book and pins her eyes on her uncle. It took him a minute to notice, being preoccupied with digging into his memory for all the murderous asses that had been chained in his handcuffs in his career, but he eventually meets her gaze.

He starts to ask her what is wrong, but she speaks first. "You're left-handed?"

He nods, eyebrows raised, ready for what was sure going to be an interesting conversation.

"So I am. My mother said I must have gotten it from my father, because she always remembered that you were left-handed, and no one on her side of the family was."

Don wants to express that he is happy to share this characteristic with her, that he is relieved somehow to be able to show that they are connected in a way that she was not with her father or Sam or Gran, but the proper words wouldn't come to his lips. Anna went on.

"Have you ever wondered at the fact that 'right' also means 'correct'? It is not this way in Russian, but it is in English, and I believe many Western European languages. There has been a stigma against left-handed people for such a long time. Even now in parts of China, left-handed people are pressured to learn to write with their right hand, because the order in which strokes are written when writing Chinese characters is very important, and the whole system was built by right-handed people for the practicality and ease of other right-handed people. It's amazing what we will discriminate against. Of course, in the West, white people soon started to meet black people and Native Americans and started to hate them based on race, and I supposed handedness as a means of separating the 'better' from the 'worse' sort of fell to the wayside. More convenient to use skin color, being so readily visible and difficult to hide, I suppose. But the signs of hating left-handedness are still there. Vestigial prejudice, if you will."

She glances down at Don's hand again, and seems to notice for the first time that he is working. "Oh, I'm sorry. I'll stop bothering you." She looks back down at her book, and Don is left feeling like he lost a crucial opportunity. He realizes he did not speak at all during the entire exchange.

While Don's list grows to encompass a sixth page of cheap, government-subsidized paper, Detective Angell releases the suspect she had been interrogating. His alibi was more solid than most of the ones that passed through her interrogation room, despite his clear motive and smug attitude, and she is left chew her cheek angrily on her way back to square one. But all annoyance disappears when she sees a stunning redhead sitting at her boyfriend's desk.

"You must be Anna," Jess says when she gets close.

The girl looks up, smiling automatically. "Yes, ma'am."

Jess sticks her hand out, and Anna shakes it. "I'm Jess. I work with your uncle."

"It's very nice to meet you."

Jess sits down at her desk, opposite Anna. "How are you holding up? This whole situation must be pretty crazy for you, yeah?"

Anna looks around, as if sizing up the precinct. "Quite crazy, yes. It is not exactly what you expect of America."

Jess raises her eyebrows and asks good-humoredly, "What _do_ you expect of America?"

"Oh, you know, football games. Hot dogs. Starbucks."

"Do they have Starbucks in Russia?"

"Of course. Nearly everywhere, now. But it's still thought of as a specifically American thing. I don't care for it much myself – I prefer tea. Though I suppose Starbucks barely even counts as coffee, does it? It's all sugar and cream and weird mixes of fruit juices at those places. But such is what some people like."

Jess studies Anna as she talks, and realizes what is striking about the girl's face.

"Your eyes," she blurts out without thinking.

Anna brings her hand to her face. "My eyes?"

"They're red."

The girls' irises are a startling mix of cherry flavored candy and blood, a perfect match to her hair.

"Oh, yes. I have some sort of pigment deficiency, I believe. Apparently, my body can only produce red and white. Nothing else. As you can see." She holds out her snow-pale arm for proof.

"They're… stunning."

"My mother used to say it made me look like a _vampir_."

"Your mother called you a vampire?"

She laughs, a sound like bells. "Yes. With love, of course."

"Of course," Jess echoes quietly, remembering her conversation with Don from the previous week. Images came to mind of the drug addicts' children she has seen: slight kids, dressed in threadbare hand-me-downs, perched on bare mattresses stained with God-knows-what, surrounded by heroin needles. Told their whole lives that they looked like storybook monsters instead of storybook princesses.

"My mother looked quite different. She said she had blonde hair when she was young, but it was a rather dark brown by the time I was born. And she had the most amazing eyes. They were this icy grey color. And I know what it sounds like. You know, grey? Wouldn't that just wash out her entire face? But the thing is, it didn't. Her skin was pale and her eyes were grey and she was just so absolutely lovely. And all my siblings – they all look so different. My one sister has hair like, like – oh my goodness, I could describe her so well in Russian."

The narrative continues, an endless stream of excitement that contrasted so beautifully with the dark building that bureaucratized crime. Anna stops every few minutes to ask if she was interrupting some important police business, but Jess continually assured her that she could keep talking. The girl's apple-colored irises light up with so much enthusiasm that, despite her case going nowhere, despite her stomach complaining that she had had nothing to eat all day except seven cups of coffee and a sandy-tasting granola bar from the vending machine, despite the vivid memory of the previous night when she had dropped by her brother's apartment and her sister-in-law had answered the door with a purple-black bruise around her eye poorly concealed with hastily-applied make-up, Jess couldn't help but smile, and she wanted to badly for the happiness to carry on infecting her small, dreary precinct. Anna drew her in like a magician, captivating her, making her forget the pile of paperwork on her desk and the list of twenty phone calls she had to make by five when the businesspeople left their offices and the weight of her eyelids drooping over her bloodshot scleras and the fact that she remembered the world sclera from high school but she had forgotten her mother's birthday the previous week. Anna was describing in detail her oldest brother's fingernails – his _fingernails_, of all things – and acting like it was the most important topic in the world, and talking to Jess like one of those down-to-earth, beloved teachers might talk to a student at the best sort of class, a lecture that was enchantingly interesting and didn't contain a single ounce of material that would be on the test, and Jess felt weightless.

"Angell, where'ya at with the Wilson case?" Her CO's voice broke the Russian girl's spell with a precision developed over decades of interrogation. Jess's head whipped around and she immediately began a recounting of the current – bleak – situation, but the ever-charming Detective Clyde was already moving across the room to find another slacker to scream at.

Jess turns back to Anna, but cannot get a word out before the gentle, accented voice again fills her ears. "I'm so sorry, I totally forgot you were working and not just hear to talk to." Her delicate hand touches Jess's arm. "I'll stop, I'll stop."

Jess wants to say that it is fine, that she isn't mad in the least, that, if she had her way, she would listen to Anna talk and talk and talk for hours, but she couldn't seem to figure out how to say it. And yet somehow, looking at the girl's bright, toothy smile, Jess believes she understands.


End file.
